Be who you want to attract,
Before you start "searching" for the right person,
Be the right person,
Find yourself,
Be comfortable with who you are,
Find happiness within you,
If someone is the only basis of your joy,
I'm afraid,your joy might be a mirage.

Serrations of chimneys
Stone-black perforate
Velvet-black dark.
A tree coils in core of darkness.
My swinging
Hands
Incise the night.
A man slips into a doorway,
Black hole in blackness, and drowns there.
A second man passing traces
The diagram of his steps
On invisible pavement. Rain
Draws black parallel threads
Through the hollow of air.

He was a civil war
and I died trying to be a soldier

There were furrows in his brow
Kept his music much too loud
Paper skin and paper grin
To his chest, a heart we'll pin

Veins are ****** tunnels
A carbonated bottle
A lump love funnels,
Bubbles over, feeling sober
Dismal future, no four leaf clover
Afraid to search around for a light
Afraid to wait around and see that it might
Not be all that worthwhile

He lived to take flight
Dark crimson in a ****** vile
Injection withdrawn, thin paper smile
Down below,
Ground is coming near
And before the pavement
A vision was clear

A final thought rummaged through his brain
A blissful blow, a final aching pain
A florescent concussion, an angelic cheer
A temporary life he lived
For it was not death he feared

All I've known
of love
has been bound
by duty, expectation
filaments of need

golden moments
of being
recognized
a rare flicker
in the darkness.

I sought
a nameless place
where one could
defy the laws
of gravity

held captive
simply
by the radiance
of a rising sun
between us.

Armchairs and whiskey.
Bottle on the side table.
Eyes open wide, unable
to sleep. Thoughts creep
into his shaking skull.
Hands shake and grip the bow.
He pulls his scream across a string,
because his throat won't voice his wearied woe.

The sound's more than just pain,
and it tells more of his aching bones
than it should.
He plays the tears he can't show,
and it's understood
as the instrument moans.
That's all he needs to show a world
that doesn't know what his pain sounds like.
He'd talk about it if he could. Rachmaninov understood.

My best friend was my Teddy,
I would hold him every day,
And when the monsters came at night,
He’d scare them all away.

My best friend was my mother,
For she kept me safe and warm,
And while she held me close at night,
I feared no hurt or harm.

My best friend was my father,
For he always knew the way,
And though my path lay in the mists,
He never let me stray.

My best friend was my baby,
And I loved her more than life,
And in my sweetest dreams I dreamt
Of making her my wife.

My best friend was the bottle,
For it filled the hole she left.
It numbed the pain, it dulled my mind,
It helped me to forget.

My best friend was the needle,
For it tamed the beast inside,
And when the monsters came at night,
I’d run from them and hide.

My best friends all deserted me,
I struggled on my own,
I said a prayer… to empty air,
And found myself alone.

And when I found myself alone,
A cobweb on a shelf,
I knew that no one, nothing could,
Protect me from myself.

I sought a friend, a smiling face,
I made a call or two,
And always heard the same six words,
“We don’t have time for you.”

My Teddy could not save me,
For the monsters proved too strong,
My mother tried to rescue me,
But couldn’t stay for long.

My father was asleep in bed,
He did not hear my cry,
My baby left me years ago,
We’re over, she and I.

The bottle proved a fickle friend,
And when I drained it dry,
The bottom held no answers,
And I could not see the sky.

The needle proved a traitor,
And the day I turned my back,
It slipped a knife between my ribs,
And everything went black.

My best friend is the reaper,
And I yearn a coup de grace,
I feel his breath, a shot rings out,
I feel his cold embrace.